The translation of Chinua Achebe's Things fall apart into isiXhosa Lwadilik'udonga : a critical analysis

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Things Fall Apart is an unsentimental novel which appeared in 1958 as ChinuaAchebe's first novel. It is regarded as a classic of world literature. It is deemedvital that such rich literature as the one of Achebe, be made accessible toreaders in as many language communities as possible. It is through the vehicleof translation that a multitude of readers are endowed with the power to makesome form of contact with much of the world's great writings.But translation of literature is a very complex process, which poses some difficultyet interesting problems that demand particular notice and specific attention. Intranslation of literature one is not just dealing with words written in a certain.time, space and sociopolitical situation, most importantly it is the cultural aspectof the text that should be taken into account. Therefore, translation of literatureis not just the transfer of information between languages, but the transfer of oneculture to another. Literary texts in isiXhosa and English, which are not onlywritten in different languages but also represent different cultures, differ greatlyin terms of linguistic, literary and cultural-social conventions. Challenges such asthese make it difficult for a translator, in this case K.S. Bongela, to render thesource language text flawlessly in the target language.This study thus investigates how Bongela coped with transmitting the culturalissues in Things Fall Apart into Lwadilik'udonga. It will highlight the variousproblems the translator encountered in search for equivalence and adequacy,and also analyse the strategies he has employed in this transference of culturalelements to the target text. As will be seen, it is possible to relate the translationof this text to the six general rules mentioned by Bassnett-MacGuire (1988: 116-117) for the translator.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University